British pop star-turned-talent show judge Melanie Brown has been transformed into an animated fairy after lending her voice to new Disney film Tinker Bell And The Legend Of The Neverbeast. The former Spice Girls star, who made her movie acting debut in 1997's Spice World, has brought "feisty" scout fairy Fury to life onscreen, alongside Independence Day actress Mae Whitman as Tinker Bell. Ginnifer Goodwin, Rosario Dawson and Lucy Liu also feature in the new project.
Brown, aka Scary Spice, says, "Fury kind of suits me. She does have attitude... It's like a little mini me!"
The singer goes on to reveal the job is a dream come true for both her and her daughters, who inspired her to take on the role.
She continues, "I've got four girls and they love Tinker Bell. They have lots of dress ups... I'm a huge Disney fan...
"I've had an absolute ball. I've thoroughly enjoyed my experience."

Columbia Pictures via Everett Collection
Cameron Diaz ranted at an Australian radio host and ended the interview early after the presenter made comments about her friend Drew Barrymore's past drug problems.
The Hollywood actress and her Sex Tape co-star Jason Segel were guests on Australian radio station KIIS 1065's The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Monday (21Jul14) to promote their new movie.
However, the interview took a turn for the worse when host Kyle Sandilands brought up Diaz's Charlie's Angels co-star Barrymore, and mentioned that she had suffered drug addiction in the past.
The comments prompted an angry outburst from Diaz, who ranted at the host, "I'm sure you've never been through it... I'm sure Kyle, you've never been through a drug phase or alcoholism (or) anything like that... pretty clean, always get it right."
After letting Segel answer the next question, Diaz cut back into the conversation to cut the interview short, concluding, "We're having to go now, sorry. They're wrapping us up."
After the interview concluded, Sandilands' co-host Jackie O scolded the star for upsetting their interviewee by bringing up Barrymore's issues and mentioning Diaz's rumoured boyfriend Benji Madden, saying, "Good one Kyle... You ruined that interview. The two things that would have got her off-side, you went there."

WENN/Joseph Marzullo
Chloë Grace Moretz has been staying incredibly busy, with new projects being announced and promoted all over the place. Next up for the talented young star is the Japanese animated film The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Studio Ghibli (co-founded by Hayao Miyazaki) is behind this one, and people are expecting great things. Here's a look at the 2013 production:
The movie is based on the oldest recorded Japanese story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and tellsof a tiny girl found inside a stalk of bamboo. According to Entertainment Weekly "she grows into a beautiful woman who attracts many suitors, though she hides a secret."
Moretz will voice the lead role of Kaguya, and she stars alongside James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, Darren Criss, Lucy Liu, James Marsden, and John Cho.
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Actors Annette Bening, Ellen Burstyn, Lucy Liu, John Lithgow and Nathan Lane and director Oliver Stone were among the stars in the audience for Kenneth Branagh's final Macbeth performance at New York's Park Avenue Armory on Sunday night (22Jun14). The production of the classic Shakespeare play came to an end after a sold-out limited run, which lasted less than three weeks.

Oscar winner Halle Berry grew emotional on Sunday (01Jun14) as she was feted as a Global Icon at the 2014 Huading Film Awards.
The Monster's Ball beauty was the guest of honour at the Chinese prizegiving, which was held in Hollywood for the first time, and she became visibly flustered as she stepped onstage to accept the night's biggest accolade. She told the audience, "No one is ready to receive a global icon award" and added that she was "happy for the better interpersonal relationship" between Hollywood movie stars and film fans in China, where big screen releases face stiff censorship reviews.
Other winners included British actor Orlando Bloom, who was named Best Global Movie Star for his role in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and Jeremy Renner, who earned the Best Global Supporting Actor honour for American Hustle. Fast &amp; Furious 6 was voted Best Global Movie of the Year, The Croods took Best Global Animated Movie and Guillermo del Toro claimed the Best Global Director award for his sci-fi hit Pacific Rim.
Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Charlie Hunnam also received prizes at the Hollywood ceremony, which was beamed live from the Montalban Theater to more than 800 million viewers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, while movie composer Hans Zimmer picked up a Lifetime Achievement honour. The event was co-hosted by actress Lucy Liu and Chinese TV personality Olivia Xu.

Jeff Neumann/CBS Broadcasting
Season 2 of Elementary has come to a close and we're faced with several things all at once: Sherlock Holmes throwing his lot in in with MI6, Joan Watson moving out on her own and Mycroft Holmes vanishing in order to escape the potential wrath of the French terrorist group Le Mileu. It's going to be quite interesting to see how this all shakes out.
The first character whose future we must consider is Sherlock, specifically in regards to his decision to consult for British Intelligence. That plainly means that the esteemed detective will be setting up shop in London. What this means for Captain Thomas Gregson and detective Marcus Bell is anybody's guess. Apart from an arc that featured Bell getting shot due to something Sherlock did and Gregson trying to save his marriage at one point, the two were largely reduced to having Gregson yell at Sherlock for breaking protocol and Bell to sitting and scowling next to Sherlock during police interrogations. The writers really need to do something with those two, since Aidan Quinn and Jon Michael Hill are both too talented to just be bit players again during Season 3. A good solution would be for Holmes to realize that New York is too much in his blood and have him return there after an episode or two so they can re-integrate Gregson and Bell as Sherlock realizes his mistake.
What to do about Mycroft? Although Elementary isn't in any way strictly adherent to the canon of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's material, Rhys Ifans didn't feel like the right fit as Sherlock's brother, especially compared to the Mycroft of the BBC's Sherlock. This isn't a knock against Ifans' acting ability, but the show might want to make him undergo plastic surgery and have him coming back looking like an entirely different person. There just didn't seem to be any genuine chemistry between Ifans and Lucy Liu either — the Mycroft/Watson plot just seemed cobbled together to make Sherlock act like an even bigger ass than he normally does.
Speaking of Watson, she is a bigger issue. There still doesn't seem to be an avenue for Sherlock to have any romantic feelings for her, since he is still far too vested in his work, since that is probably one of the only things keeping him from slipping back into an abyss of drug use (though the audience is still going to be very interested to find what he did with that baggie of heroin that he stashed in his jacket pocket towards the end of Season 2. There were some who speculated that he might have intended to slip back into drug use to force Watson's hand into becoming his "sober companion," the pairing that made them fall into each other's orbits in the first place. That scenario was seemingly dashed when he decided to accept the MI6 offer, but that baggie will keep lurking like Chekhov's Gun during the summer hiatus, leaving us wondering what place it had. Will it force a reconciliation of sorts between the two or will it be forgotten?
The show is on a good path, and this upcoming season is going to be an important one in terms of it staying on stable footing. Jonny Lee Miller is a fantastic actor, and he's made Sherlock a must-watch character full of nuance beyond being an arrogant socially inept buffoon, but it's going to be up to the writers to make it must-watch TV. They have ths summer to really hammer that down or they will have even more time the following season to spend on the beach.
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Actor Hugh Jackman crashed the live U.S. broadcast of the Tony Award nominations on Tuesday (29Apr14) by interrupting guest presenters Lucy Liu and Jonathan Groff as they were about to read out the shortlist for the Broadway trophies at the Diamond Horseshoe club at New York's Paramount Hotel. The Les Miserables star walked onstage and said, "Hang on, hang on, sorry guys, sorry", before reminding viewers to tune in to the prizegiving on 8 June (14), when he will serve as the event's host for the fourth time. Musical comedy A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder and Neil Patrick Harris' glam rock production of Hedwig and the Angry Itch lead the nominations with 10 and eight nods, respectively.

New Line Cinema via Everett Collection
Sex and the City is an important part of television history. It opened up a dialogue about sex, gave a voice to female sexuality and female professionals, and made the Cosmo the drink of the single lady. It has inspired fashion, slang, and even influenced television. Along with Golden Girls, Sex and the City has established a genre of television series. Now, shows about girlfriends defined by four specific archetypes, conversations around a table, and the female friend family unit are popular.
Here is a ranking of some of the best and least inspired shows that give a wink and a nod to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda.
Girlfriends
Grade: A+
It’s hard to deny this show is influenced by the popular Sarah Jessica Parker series. The opening sequence for this Kelsey Grammer produced sitcom is enough to make it seem like a rip-off of the show, but this comedy is so much more. The characters are similar to the archetypes of SATC but they are also full-fledged characters. Tracee Ellis Ross plays the queen bee of the group but she is also a lawyer and not as romantically savvy. The show takes the best parts of SATC and pushes them further. It show empowered professional women, the bonds of friendship, while introducing more race, social issues, and opening up more of a dialogue about feminism.
Girls
Grade: A-
The popular and polarizing Lena Dunham series managed to hold onto the worst parts of SATC and still make an interesting and rich show. Some of the most frustrating parts of the original HBO series were when the women avoided clear communication and reacted impulsively at the detriment to their relationships. It also is a little tough to stomach a series about opulent women who are unburdened in a city as hard as New York. And yet, Dunham’s series uses those exact elements to shine a light on being young, entitled, and neurotic in New York. Hannah offers a more emotionally unbalanced Carrie. Marnie is a more sympathetic and less type-A Miranda. Jessa shows the consequences of Samantha’s wild ways. And Shoshanna is just as funny as Charlotte.
The Carrie Diaries
Grade: B
This show makes no qualms about referencing SATC. It shouldn’t because it’s a prequel. A young Carrie (AnnaSophia Robb) ditches high school for the big city and gets a job at Interview magazine in the 1980s. The show unnecessarily leans on the HBO series when a show about growing up in New York and 1980s nostalgia are enough to make it inherently entertaining. The addition of Lindsey Gort as Samantha is also shaking up the series for the better. However, die-hard fans will notice the major differences. They also seem to dust off SATC references in a bit of a forced kind of way.
Cashmere Mafia
Grade: C
This post-SATC series makes no qualms about its connections to the original. It stars former guest star Lucy Liu and employs designer Patricia Field. Darren Star and Candace Bushnell had dueling series at the same time. We side with Star because he’s been doing scandalous soaps for ages. This series opted more for exploring the power dynamics and social lives of high-powered businesswomen. That’s inherently more interesting, and more of a nod to feminism, than SATC. As you can tell from the scene below, it has plenty of gabbing about men, memorable slang, and friendship. It had the potential to be an upgrade to the original but was battling Brooke Shields and her brows.
Lipstick Jungle
Grade: D
This series lived and died by its casting. Brooke Shields is a viable candidate for a series about successful career women. However, the choice to cast television show killer Lindsay Price did not help. With weird names like Victory Ford and Nico Reilly and the choice to have the three women be a movie producer, fashion designer, and magazine maven seemed very contrived. At least on Melrose Place, Heather Locklear was a sexy, advertising executive. These choices killed a lot of credibility for the logic of the show and its potential for feminist leanings. Rather than going full-tilt comedy the series opted for a more serious approach to “having it all.” Paging Liz Lemon.
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Columbia Pictures
Hollywood is a magical place where you can go from the mail room to the board room. It takes time to build a career and a lot of small roles before the big break. But one major role can turn you into a household name. Some of Hollywood’s hottest actors have small roles in memorable movies that will leave you shocked you missed them.
Melissa McCarthy in Charlie’s Angels
McCarthy is a comedic powerhouse who became a household name after 2011's Bridesmaids. It may be hard to believe that she was once a near-extra who called Lucy Liu a b**ch in Charlie’s Angels. She also had a small role in Go and was featured in the trailer.
Jennifer Lawrence on My Super Sweet 16 promos
Lawrence is so successful at the young age of 23, it can be hard to believe she's been in the business for years already. Lawrence started off playing the title character's daughter on The Bill Engvall Show, and found a spot in these promos for a particularly regrettable reality series.
Paula Patton in Hitch
Patton's relationship with Robin Thicke post-Blurred Lines has put her name on everyone’s lips. She has found success in the Mission Impossible films and has some buzz around her film career. But back in 2005, her first role was in this questionably funny Will Smith comedy.
Christina Hendricks on Undressed
Hendricks found the role of a lifetime as Mad Men's waning queen bee Joan Holloway. Long before playing the strong but unfortunate advertising agency secretary, however, Hendricks appeared on MTV’s sex-fueled soap Undressed.
Rooney Mara in Youth in Revolt
Before her ascension to films like The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Side Effects, Mara starred in this forgettable Michael Cera offbeat comedy. With this movie, she kicked off her pattern of playing intense, intelligent, and sexual characters... a pratice that has served her well.
Rashida Jones &amp; Steven Moyer in Ny-Lon
Granted, you wouldn't really call a starring role in a series a "small" one. However, this British TV show is widely unknown in the States, so we'll count it. Jones played a New Yorker in a long-distance relationship with a British businessman (Moyer).
Jane Krakowski in Vacation
People remember Krakowski for 30 Rock and her role on Ally McBeal, but she began the trade as a child actor. She delivers one of the most memorable lines in this popular 1980s comedy.
Steve Carell in Curly Sue
Now one of Hollywood’s biggest comedy actors, Carell started his film career with a non-speaking role. He might not be the first actor to play a background waiter, but very few of those were called "Tesio."
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DreamWorks
For the bulk of every Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, moose and squirrel would engage in high concept escapades that satirized geopolitics, contemporary cinema, and the very fabrics of the human condition. With all of that to work with, there's no excuse for why the pair and their Soviet nemeses haven't gotten a decent movie adaptation. But the ingenious Mr. Peabody and his faithful boy Sherman are another story, intercut between Rocky and Bullwinkle segments to teach kids brief history lessons and toss in a nearly lethal dose of puns. Their stories and relationship were much simpler, which means that bringing their shtick to the big screen would entail a lot more invention — always risky when you're dealing with precious material.
For the most part, Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman handles the regeneration of its heroes aptly, allowing for emotionally substance in their unique father-son relationship and all the difficulties inherent therein. The story is no subtle metaphor for the difficulties surrounding gay adoption, with society decreeing that a dog, no matter how hyper-intelligent, cannot be a suitable father. The central plot has Peabody hosting a party for a disapproving child services agent and the parents of a young girl with whom 7-year-old Sherman had a schoolyard spat, all in order to prove himself a suitable dad. Of course, the WABAC comes into play when the tots take it for a spin, forcing Peabody to rush to their rescue.
Getting down to personals, we also see the left brain-heavy Peabody struggle with being father Sherman deserves. The bulk of the emotional marks are hit as we learn just how much Peabody cares for Sherman, and just how hard it has been to accept that his only family is growing up and changing.
DreamWorks
But more successful than the new is the film's handling of the old — the material that Peabody and Sherman purists will adore. They travel back in time via the WABAC Machine to Ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, and the Trojan War, and 18th Century France, explaining the cultural backdrop and historical significance of the settings and characters they happen upon, all with that irreverent (but no longer racist) flare that the old cartoons enjoyed. And oh... the puns.
Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman is a f**king treasure trove of some of the most amazingly bad puns in recent cinema. This effort alone will leave you in awe.
The film does unravel in its final act, bringing the science-fiction of time travel a little too close to the forefront and dropping the ball on a good deal of its emotional groundwork. What seemed to be substantial building blocks do not pay off in the way we might, as scholars of animated family cinema, have anticipated, leaving the movie with an unfinished feeling.
But all in all, it's a bright, compassionate, reasonably educational, and occasionally funny if not altogether worthy tribute to an old favorite. And since we don't have our own WABAC machine to return to a time of regularly scheduled Peabody and Sherman cartoons, this will do okay for now.
If nothing else, it's worth your time for the puns.
3/5
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Re-teamed with Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz to reprise their roles in "Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle"

Raised in Queens, NY

Cast as the sadistic dominatrix/hit woman for Chinese mafia in "Payback"

Played an exotic dancer in "City of Industry"

Summary

Stunningly beautiful and fiercely intelligent, actress Lucy Liu broke free of many of the stereotypes that typically pigeonholed Asian performers - particular female - in Hollywood. Following a string of early appearances on such popular series as "ER" (NBC, 1994-2009), Liu skyrocketed to fame in 1998 when she joined the cast of the quirky legal comedy "Ally McBeal" (Fox, 1997-2002) as the deliciously malicious Ling Woo. The actress quickly parlayed her sudden popularity into roles on the big screen in feature film hits like "Shanghai Noon" (2000), "Charlie's Angels" (2000) and a bravura performance as Japanese crime lord O-Ren Ishii in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" (2003). Later theatrical disappointments like "Lucky Number Slevin" (2006) and "Rise: Blood Hunter" (2007) gave way to more lucrative voice roles in such animated features as "Kung Fu Panda" (2008) and "Tinker Bell" (2008). And while starring roles on small screen efforts like "Cashmere Mafia" (ABC, 2008) failed to bear fruit, a recurring part on the critically-hailed police drama "Southland" (NBC, 2009/TNT, 2010- ) did much to reestablish her credentials as a serious actress. With her obvious beauty enhanced by with an undeniable strength of character, Liu embraced her heritage even as she refused to let it define her as an artist.

Education

Name

New York University

University of Michigan

Stuyvesant High School

Notes

In addition to her acting, Liu had a successful career as a visual artist, her mixed media compositions were frequently on display in galleries in New York and Los Angeles. In 1994, she was given a grant to study in China based on her show at SoHo's Cast Iron Gallery. The time immersed in Chinese culture changed her approach to art and activism. In 2011, Liu revealed that she worked under the pseudonym Yu Ling because she did not want art fans to be influenced by her acting roles.

On Ling Woo, her character on "Ally McBeal" (Fox), Liu told the Boston Herald on March 12, 1999: "I'm kind of getting into a place where I can actually be – it sounds a little strange – sexual as a woman and as a minority. And that's really unusual. I think that's really kind of exciting for me."

To critics who assert that the exotic and often malicious Ling Woo feeds into American popular stereotyping and fetishizing of the Asian-American woman, Liu replied: "What stereotype am I perpetuating? I haven't done anything that I feel is anything like that. I think people think too PC about everything."

"One reason I decided to pick up martial arts was because I was so sick of people saying, 'Do you know kung fu?' Now I can say, 'Yes I do.'" – Liu quoted in People magazine, Oct. 21, 2002

Liu was named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People for 2004.

"I try to keep my personal life private, because then I can be whatever I am supposed to be on film. People have said, 'Wow, you are such a bitch!' and I say, 'Thank you.'" – Liu quoted in People magazine, May 10, 2004

"No one before me has been involved in acting. Culturally it wasn't something that you did. My parents were very focused on education. I think they thought that when you go into the arts, there's no security." – Liu quoted in Emmy magazine, Issue No. 2, 2013